It is very common for active shooters of hand guns and rifles to reload their spent cartridges. A cartridge that is purchased new can be repeatedly fired and reloaded, e.g. commonly five or six times, before the case is considered to be non-reloadable. The savings to the shooter can be substantial and just as important to many hobbyists, the cartridges can be custom tailored to fit the shooter's concept of the ideal cartridge case for his particular event.
The operations to be performed on a cartridge for reloading are numerous. The spent primer cap must be removed, the case must be resized, a new primer cap and powder must be inserted, a bullet must be seated in the casing's mouth and the casing mouth needs to be crimped. Certain combinations of these operations may be accomplished by a single die but, in any event, between four and six reloading dies are employed with the corresponding four or six reloading steps to be performed. For each step, a cartridge case is seated on a reloading ram or plunger and the case is forced by the plunger into or onto an appropriate die.
Typically a single station reloading tool includes a fixture that is secured to a workbench. The fixture includes a guide for the plunger and mechanism for manually moving the plunger up and down in the guide. The top of the plunger is designed to receive a cartridge case. The fixture also includes a die holding plate aligned above the plunger. Various dies are adapted for sequential interchangeable mounting in the die holding plate. The cartridges are individually positioned on the plunger and pressed into the first die. The die is replaced and the process repeated as many times as required for completion of the reloading process.
The present invention is directed to a modification of the single station reloading tool. By positioning dies in a circular pattern to form multiple stations, and then loading cartridge cases in sequence on an indexable rotatable turret, the cartridge cases can be moved in sequence through the multiple stations. For example, if there are four reloading stations, the first cartridge case is placed on the turret and the plunger activated to perform the first step. The turret is then indexed to place the cartridge in line with the next die station and a second cartridge is placed on the turret in line with the first die station. The plunger is activated to accomplish two independent reloading die functions. Third and fourth cartridges are added in sequence until four reloading steps are simultaneously performed on different cartridges. Thereafter a completed reloaded cartridge is removed and a new cartridge added to the turret in its place so that each plunger action performs four reloading steps on four separate cartridges.
The above broad concept of multi-station reloading is not new to this invention. Assignee of the present application developed a multi-station cartridge reloading tool wherein the rotatable turret is indexed manually. The present invention is, however, more specifically to a tool having the feature of automatic indexing of the turret which as broadly stated also is not unique to this invention as evidenced by U.S. Pat. No. 4,515,062, issued to Richard J. Lee. Lee provides an indexing turret carried by a plunger. Indexing is achieved by an indexing shaft that is projected through the center of the turret. The turret slides up and down on the shaft but is rotatably fixed to the shaft. The turret is rotatable relative to the plunger. A clutch mechanism has one component fixed to the plunger and rides up and down with the plunger but not engaged with the shaft. A second component of the clutch mechanism rides on a guide surface of the shaft and is engaged with the first component in downward movement of the plunger and is disengaged in the upward movement. The guide surface on the shaft has a spiral section. The second component of the clutch mechanism is guided over the spiral section in both the upward and downward movement of the plunger. Indexing of the turret does not take place in the plunger's upward movement because the clutch components are disengaged. In the downward movement, the engaged clutch components are engaged and force turning of the shaft and thus indexing of the turret.